Ghost Rock

When I saw that Gary Busey was in this movie, I had to see it. I knew it would be bad, but I did not know how bad. This movie was bad, and not in a funny way. Gary Busey plays the mayor of a little Western town, and his job is to maintain order while a group of Chinese railroad workers and locals fight for control. There was so much fighting in this movie that it was hard to keep track of the reasons. The fighting was also matrix style, and it was kung fu. Gary Busey was not the only horrible actor in this movie, everyone involved was equally nauseating. I had to turn the movie off after an hour. The worst part is that I had this movie in my home for almost a week.

An interesting and incongruous mixture of martial arts and old fashioned gunslinging happen in this western of Ghost Rock. The film is so named after a town where Gary Busey is the town boss. He's having some threats to his leadership coming and he's brought in a group of outlaws as enforcers headed by David Jean Thomas who look like they enjoy their work.

Our nominal hero is Michael Worth who can use a little training in both the martial arts and firearms. He's aided and abetted by Sharon Stone ripoff Jenya Lano.

The film is poor in about every department you can name. I guess you either needed the late David Carradine for this kind of hybrid film or Chuck Norris in his salad days.

Michael Worth stars as a gun-runner who goes up against the local mobster (Gary Busey) who wiped out Worth's friends and family years ago, however a mysterious blonde has returned and is killing of Busey's gang one by one, also on hand is Jeff Fahey who is fairly useless to the High Plains Drifter rip off storyline. When I think westerns I don't think of dynamic martial artistry combining with six-shooters. There is a problem of tone and due to this the movie never gels and we are left to flounder in the silliness of watching a hybrid of two genres that never mix that well. The best of these hybrids was Lone Wolf McQuade but the movie this reminds me was the Olvier Gruner starred dud The Fighter. Which also combined kickboxing with western antics, the western ripped off there was Shane, where as this one rips off High Plains Drifter, even down to the "twist" at the end. This is of course a very silly effort but Dustin Rikert is not much of an action director and for this the movie is fairly dull.

*1/2 out of 4-(Poor)

A "western" with people running around doing Shaolin kung fu. There's a "Chinese" character who looks as Chinese as my Aunt Sally, who has never seen a Chinese person in her life. All the bad guys are dummies, and even though they always have their guns aimed at the good guys at point blank range and could kill them at any time, never bothers to pull the trigger. This, despite the fact that the bad guy's head honcho (Gary Busey) has killed people randomly throughout the film, but for some reason always lets the hero go so he can come back for one of those final shoot-outs. The script by the star is nonsensical, even as camp. The martial arts is actually quite good, but in the background of a western, it's just...wrong. Also, did the female lead steal Sharon Stone's clothes from THE QUICK AND THE DEAD? Someone call the police.

4 out of 10

It wasn't an original idea, the thought of combining the martial arts and western film genres into a single project. It's been done before: Kung Fu with Davind Carradine, The Fighter aka Savate (a straight to video film by Oliver Gruner). However, none before were this horrible.

For starters, the acting was wooden throughout the entire film. The only recognizable actor was Gary Busey, and I truly pity him for having to resort to this kind of crap to pay his rent. It is such a fall to a truly talented actor.

Then there's the so-called martial arts in this. Holy crap, can none of these "martial artists" really do martial arts? It's almost as bad as most of Bloodfist! I've seen children who are more impressive martial artists than these people! The only possible upside to this entire thing is that the two lead actresses were very attractive, and this certainly isn't enough to carry a movie, especially if the viewer has any appreciation for acting talent.

At all costs, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE!! You will waste valuable brain matter if you do! For the sake of your intelligence, do not watch this!!